June 2012

Mexico's antitrust commission dealt a potential blow to Carlos Slim, the world's richest man, by allowing the country's leading television company to take a stake in mobile-phone operator Grupo Iusacell, in a challenge to Slim's America Movil.

The agency, which had originally blocked the proposed joint venture between Grupo Televisa and Iusacell, said on appeal that the deal could proceed, but imposed several conditions involving television advertising, programming and corporate governance. Televisa, the world's top producer of Spanish-language programming, said it plans to analyze the conditions before deciding whether to accept or contest them. If Televisa accepts the agency's terms, it would mark the company's entry into Mexico's coveted mobile-phone market, which is dominated by America Movil. The conditions also could prompt Slim's companies to resume advertising on the free broadcast channels run by Televisa and TV Azteca, Mexico's No. 2 broadcaster.

The National Broadband Plan addressed the traditional four questions of telecom policy: how do we get networks everywhere, how do we get everyone on, how do we have a competition framework that drives consumer welfare and how do we use existing networks better? The Congressional mandate to write the plan, however, required us to examine a 5th question: what policies would drive innovation over broadband? This inquiry led to another: a question that both excites and troubles me: What happens if we remove bandwidth as a constraint to innovation?

The question excites me because, as I learned from a brilliant doctor, genetic sequencing—which uses so much bandwidth it is cheaper and faster to send the results by Fed Ex—can revolutionize medicine. Eliminating bandwidth constraints can make this new tool more effective for treating, among other maladies, cancer. The question excites me because, as I learned from numerous educators, immersive gaming technology—which requires massive bandwidth-- can improve the effectiveness of education and job training, particularly for those for whom traditional methods fail. The question excites me because, as I learned from a broad spectrum of people, from those doing scientific research to those providing business services, from those focused on security to those who wish to invigorate civic engagement, the coming age of Big Data has the potential to accelerate advancements in addressing our most vexing problems. But to achieve its full potential Big Data will need Big Bandwidth. The question troubles me for the same reasons.

US telecommunications equipment maker Infinera charged that its Chinese rivals Huawei and ZTE Corp receive unfair government support and called for a tough U.S. response on both economic and security grounds.

"China's intentions are clear. They've announced their intention to intensify government support for the optical networking industry and to make their national champions world market leaders," said Michael McCarthy, chief legal and administrative officer for Infinera. "Our response must be equally clear to ensure the competition in this vital sector is not based on which government is willing to lavish the most aid to their producers, but rather on the quality of the products and the strength of the innovation," McCarthy said in testimony before the U.S.-China Economic and Security Review Commission.

The Federal Communications Commission has used FCC Form 477 to collect subscribership information from telephone service providers – the incumbent local exchange carriers (ILECs), competitive local exchange carriers (CLECs), and mobile telephony providers – for more than a decade. The FCC has required interconnected Voice over Internet Protocol (“interconnected VoIP”) service providers to report subscribership information since December 2008 because the use of VoIP technology is growing rapidly and it increasingly is used to provide local telephone service.

This report summarizes information about telephone services as of June 30, 2011. It demonstrates that interconnected VoIP service subscribership has continued to increase while subscribership to traditional wired telephone services has declined. The FCC also updates summary statistics for the mobile telephony subscribership information collected by Form 477.

• In June 2011, there were 112 million end-user switched access lines in service and 34 million interconnected VoIP subscriptions in the United States, or 146 million wireline retail local telephone service connections in total.
• Interconnected VoIP subscriptions had increased by 17% (from 29 million to 34 million) and retail switched access lines had decreased by 8% (from 122 million to 112 million) between June 2010 and June 2011. The combined effect was an annual decrease of 3% in wireline retail local telephone service connections (from 151 million to 146 million).
• Of the 146 million wireline retail local telephone service connections in June 2011, 84 million (or 58%) were residential connections and 62 million (or 42%) were business connections.
• Cross-classified by technology and customer type, the 146 million wireline retail local telephone service connections in June 2011 were: 38% residential switched access lines, 39% business switched access lines, 20% residential interconnected VoIP subscriptions, and 3% business interconnected VoIP subscriptions.